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Abner Mares vs. Daniel Ponce De Leon on April 20th on Showtime

By Dan Ambrose: With the hard hitting and very dangerous #6 WBC Jay Velez out of the way due to an injury he recently suffered, WBC featherweight champion Daniel Ponce De Leon (44-4, 35 KO’s) will now be defending his World Boxing Council 126 pound title against former two division world champion Abner Mares (25-0-1, 13 KO’s) on April 20th in a fight that will be televised on Showtime at the Home Depot Center in Carson, California, according to RingTV.

Mares said this on his social media site tonight: “Done deal! We will be fighting Daniel Ponce for his WBC title this April 20.”

Mares, 25, is moving up from super bantamweight to take this fight after failing to get a big money unification bout against WBO super bantamweight champion Nonito Donaire. De Leon is from the best at featherweight, but he does have the WBC title for the time being after defeating Jhonny Gonzalez by an 8th round technical decision last September.

Mares is smart to target one of the weaker of the featherweight champions because if he were to take on WBO featherweight champion Mikey Garcia we’d likely see Mares taste defeat for the first time in his career. Garcia is too strong for Mares, and that fight would be a bad one for Mares to take.

De Leon is a good fighter, but he fails when he’s taken on tough opponents like Adrien Broner, Yuriorkis Gamboa and Juan Manuel Lopez. He still hits hard and will make it tough on Mares by virtue of his big power, but he’s someone that can be beaten.

De Leon is very lucky that Velez suffered an injury because that would have been a really hard fight for De Leon and I don’t think he would have won that one. You can see how quickly he moved on when Velez suffered that injury. Normally fighters wait around for their opponents to heal, but not De Leon. He was gone quickly once he learned about the injury.